Current Issue: The Revelation

Text: Millie Stein Images: Douglas Lance Gibson


In 1912, the Austrian artist Egon Schiele penned a letter to ‘Dr. E’ regarding Schiele’s painting ‘Revelation’.

“The revelation of a living being,” he wrote. “A poet, an artist, a sage, a spiritualist, as you will. Have you ever felt the impression a great personality makes on the world?”

On a wall-length bookshelf in the Lover studio, Nic Briand and Susien Chong keep a book of Schiele’s work. Surrounding it are monographs from key creative figures of the recent past (Ed van der Elsken, Kris Kool, Harmony Korine, Poiret) plus the occasional iconoclast (Patty Heart, by way of a 1974 copy of Newsweek).

I don’t know if Briand and Chong have ever read Schiele’s words. In fact, I prefer to think that they haven’t, and that the book exerts a silent and pervasive influence as they spend their days drawing inspiration from great personalities – which, in their case, are simply those that are real. Continue reading…